Society

Saturday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary | 25 July 2009

Q. My husband has started working from home. The invasion of my privacy and the disruption of my peace is driving me almost mad. Now he has developed a habit of standing at the bottom of a staircase to the room where I myself work and yelling questions up it. He says he is too busy to come up the stairs and talk to me in a more civilised manner. I have tried to train him by not answering unless he comes upstairs, but then I can miss out if he assumes I am not in and he is calling to, for example, tell me something I really want to

Alex James

Slow Life | 25 July 2009

First day of the holidays and I’d promised the kids I’d take them to Oxford. As I reflect on this fatherly gesture of kindness, I realise it was for my benefit more than theirs. Specifically, they wanted to go to the toyshop on the ring road. That was all they wanted to do. Centuries of history and the aura of the gentle dignity of learning can’t compete with a pop-up shed full of brightly coloured plastic things when you’re five. I wanted to go to Oxford itself, to feel Oxford, to be a part of that silently whirring occult machinery. There are many things I always feel I should be

Jeremy Clarke

Low Life | 25 July 2009

‘Busy in here tonight,’ I observed. ‘Hello, stranger!’ she said. ‘We’ve got a band on later. Didn’t you know?’ I didn’t. Eight pints of Foster’s, ten Silk Cut, and a game of pool had been the upper limit of my ambition for the evening when I looked in the mirror before coming out. I told Candice to make hers a large one. ‘And have you heard?’ she said over her shoulder as she pressed the glass up against the optic. ‘I’ve got a fella.’ ‘No!’ I said. Candice hadn’t had a bloke to call her own for ages and she couldn’t quite believe it herself. More good news. We both

Taki

High Life | 25 July 2009

On board S/Y Bushido While the eastern islands of Greece are being whipped daily by the meltemi, the hot, strong winds that can turn sailors into zombies, the western side, or the Ionian, remains soft, green and as feminine as ever. The sea off Cephalonia is smooth and mirror-like, but this year I have yet to make contact with mama and baby porpoise. Assos is the tiny village that clings to a small isthmus between the island and a huge forested pine hill crowned by a ruined 15th-century fort. One year ago the road up to the fort was a dirt one. EU moolah, provided mostly by British and German

Kate Chisholm

Programming the Proms

Critics of this year’s festival have missed the point, Roger Wright tells Kate Chisholm Where’s the meat, the main course, the epic single masterwork? asked some of the music critics after the First Night of the Proms. They’ve missed the point, says Roger Wright, director of the Proms since 2008, in defence of his evening of Stravinsky, Chabrier, Tchaikovsky, Poulenc, Elgar, Brahms and Bruckner. The critics complained that a concert of seven works, with two intervals interrupting the flow, was not what they expected of arguably the world’s greatest classical music festival. They wanted a roof-raising performance of Verdi’s Requiem or Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. But actually the musical taster devised

The Spectator

Onwards and upwards | 25 July 2009

Having your prospects in life determined at birth is the most pernicious and fundamental form of inequality. So the present political focus on improving social mobility is to be welcomed on principle. To think that all the advantages and disadvantages of background can be ironed out is delusional; short of a Spartan-style nationalisation of child-rearing, how could such a level playing field even be attempted? But this country could — and should — go a lot further towards broadening equality of opportunity: a 2005 report funded by the Sutton Trust found that Britain came joint last with the United States in this respect in a survey of 11 developed economies.

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 25 July 2009

No one seems to have noticed, but next week the House of Lords will be abolished. I don’t mean the entire chamber, but the highest court of appeal in the land. Until now, this body has been a committee of the House of Lords, and has met in committee rooms of the House. When it resumes its work in the autumn, it will be known as the Supreme Court, and will have moved to new premises in the old Middlesex Guildhall across Parliament Square. We are always told by people like Mr New Speaker Bercow how marvellously unstuffy our institutions are these days, but in fact they are characterised by

Tamzin Lightwater

Diary of a Notting Hill Nobody | 25 July 2009

Monday Clearly we can’t have people saying it’s one rule for bed-blockers and another for Notting Hillers. We can’t be accused of penalising backbenchers we don’t like while turning a blind eye to expense abuses by Dave’s inner circle. We need one deeply principled rule for everybody. So, after much reflection, we’ve decided to let everybody off! Hurrah!! Obviously we can’t give anyone their seat back, and for those poor old dears who have already had to stand down there is, unfortunately, little we can do now, no matter how much we would like to. However, we can send out a message that we intend to make good use of

Hardeep Singh-Kohli

Diary – 25 July 2009

Last thursday evening saw me embraced by the ample bosom that is Yorkshire. I had an evening engagement in Sheffield, the oft-overlooked, Judas Priest-inspired steel town of the North. Every village, city and county has its rivalries. Dublin is divided by a river creating a historic division between the northsiders and southsiders; the west coast of Scotland labours under some delusional air of self-importance over the east-coast castle-keepers; and the dichotomy between the red and white roses of Yorkshire and Lancashire couldn’t be more documented in the annals of history. Over dinner I was offered various definitive definitions of a Yorkshireman (bear in mind, there seems no great interest in

Toby Young Toby Young

Status Anxiety | 25 July 2009

‘Antichrist’ is the comic masterpiece of a con artist mocking fans of high culture Is Antichrist, the new film from Lars von Trier, a comedy? At first glance, that seems like a ludicrous suggestion. It contains some of the most disturbing images I’ve ever seen in the cinema, including a scene in which Charlotte Gainsbourg performs a clitoridectomy on herself. How could anyone describe such a film as a comedy? Certainly, von Trier has given no hint that Antichrist is intended to be funny. In the production notes he has written a ‘confession’ in which he claims to have produced the script as a form of therapy after a bout

Peter Jones

Ancient & Modern | 25 July 2009

The moon has been hitting the headlines briefly, for something that happened 40 years ago. It was in the ancients’ minds (and sights) all the time. The ancients were farmers, and farming is season-dependent. So, determined to keep the gods smiling benevolently on their activities, they tied many of their most important religious rituals to the seasons in the hope that this would ensure their crops flourished. But ritual had to be conducted in the same way, place and time, and this was the problem. The ancients knew that the seasons coincided with the time it took for the sun to complete its annual course (the ‘solar’ cycle of 365.25

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Moore: Cameron is the best Tory opposition leader since Disraeli

Charles Moore pays David Cameron quite a compliment in his Telegraph column today, calling him the most skilful Tory leader of the opposition since Disraeli. This is high praise indeed, especially as it comes from Margaret Thatcher’s official biographer. But, as Charles goes on to say, there are still significant gaps on policy: “In 1978/9, [voters] would have known that the Tories promised something different on taxes, inflation, trade unions, and the Cold War. What do they know now? Nothing terrible, but also, nothing much. The vagueness of these impressions might not matter politically if in fact the Tories did know what they wanted to do. But where are they

Peter Hoskin

In memory of Harry Patch

The death of Harry Patch, the last British survivor of the WW1 trenches, is certainly an occasion for sadness.  But it is also an occasion to remember, honour and – yes – celebrate the tremedous sacrifices that he and his generation made, as well as the sacrifices that British servicemen continue to make, on our behalf.  Patch and Henry Allingham – who passed away last week – were decent, heroic men.  We should be proud there are thousands more like them.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories have a chance to secure both momentum and a mandate over the summer

 Matthew Parris has some typically sound advice for the Tories in his column. He proposes that over the next few months:   “They should declare and emphasise as much as they dare of what may be unwelcome in their plans. If there are big and controversial ideas to float–as in health policy, for instance there surly must be–now, not in the angry confusion of an election campaign, is the time to get them out into the open.”   Matthew is right that if the Tories are far more likely to succeed in government if they have prepared the electorate for what they are going to try and do. It will

Peter Hoskin

Balls fails to soothe Labour’s tensions

What do you do when you’ve just taken a by-election battering?  Erm, wheel out Ed Balls to rally the faithful in an interview with the Telegraph.  It’s a strange read – mainly because Balls seems to force a more caring, understanding tone, before slipping all too easily back into dividing line politics – and I’ve pulled out some of the key passages, with my own comments, below: The Milburn report.  The government have been tight-lipped about Alan Milburn’s damning report on social mobility this week; a report that they commissioned themselves.  And Balls’ comments on it here show why.  He struggles to come up with anything like a convincing line;

Lucy Vickery

Competition | 25 July 2009

In Competition No. 2605 you were invited to compose an anthem for a county of your choice. Some competitors played it straight but many chose to subvert the anthem’s traditional fawning tone. Northants, in particular, got it in the neck, with Greg Whitehead (who lives there) and John Brown (who doesn’t) struggling to find a redeeming feature between them. The postbag been swelled in recent months by a welcome influx of entrants from the US. They were out in force this week, casting an often caustic eye o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave. A lot of entries read well on the page but I

Aidan Hartley

Wild Life | 25 July 2009

Indian Ocean Coast I am woken at dawn by bastardised Australian and Swahili. ‘Wakey wakey hands off snakey,’ says Abo. ‘Comin’ out, malango?’ These are my surfing buddies: Daudi, Tony, James, Bumblebee, Mud Prawn. Surfing should be cool and fashionable. But our average age is 50. We look like vagrants. Abo has gout and walks with a loping crouch reminiscent of Early Man. Bumblebee crams a cannonball frame into a black and yellow rash vest with a bright-yellow bucket hat and is very dangerous when he catches a wave because he is unable to swerve or stop. The waves are poor. This is neither Hawaii nor Bali. The local town

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Spectator Sport | 25 July 2009

After the Lord’s Test you have to hand it to Ricky Ponting and the boys in the Baggy Greens — they have a sense of sportsmanship that is pretty much fair dinkum. As Adam Gilchrist explains in his brilliant autobiography, True Colours, the Aussie sporting psyche takes its lead from the school playing field. That means sledging is good sport, but sending on a physio for no reason other than to let the clock tick round is just embarrassing. So all those who took pot shots at Ponting for claiming the moral high ground after the Cardiff Test can just look again at the way Punter refused to be drawn

James Delingpole James Delingpole

You Know It Makes Sense | 25 July 2009

Have you ever played fireball hockey? God, what a fantastic game! You wrap a bog roll in chicken wire, douse it in paraffin, set fire to it and then play hockey with it — preferably while drunk and wearing black tie, as I was lucky enough to do myself three years ago in front of the officers’ mess at the Norfolk HQ of the Light Dragoons. I’d been invited by their then CO, Lt Col Robin Matthews, who’d liked my book How To Be Right and wanted me to give his officers a pep talk. He explained: ‘A lot of these chaps are painfully aware how much money all their non-army

Friday

Martin Bright

What Am I Supposed to Say About This?

It was with great sadness that I left the New Statesman. I always said it was a privilege to work as its political editor. I wish anyone who writes about politics for the New Statesman well. It’s a difficult gig, especially in the present political atmosphere. But Harry’s Place has just published this recording of the magazine’s self-styled Senior Editor (Politics) Mehdi Hasan. The transcript is here: “The kaffar, the disbelievers, the atheists who remain deaf and stubborn to the teachings of Islam, the rational message of the Quran; they are described in the Quran as, quote, “a people of no intelligence”, Allah describes them as; not of no morality,